Sixteen Going on Seventeen
by Fried Cheesecake
Summary: Seles makes an unlikely friend the moment she sets foot in the classroom. The year that follows is quite unlike any other. Mithos and Seles, high school AU. Warning for strong language.


I was putting random characters in the character filter and searching for fics, and I noticed that there weren't any fics for Mithos and Seles. I felt compelled to change this. This was written in about three hours and is mostly just my mind rambling.

**Warning: **Strong language, underage drinking, implied underage smoking, gays, lesbians, cross dressing, discussion of vaginas and penises… if any of that will offend you, please continue to read and then flame me afterwards. I laugh in the face of flames.

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><p>Seles knows she is doomed from the moment she sets foot in the classroom.<p>

It's not the students chatting at their desks that frighten her; they're probably all assholes, she can handle them. She'll just spend another year without friends to sit with at lunch. She doesn't care about that anyways. Nobody to entertain gives her more time to herself.

It's not the students that get to her. It's not the absence of a teacher either. Typical of a teacher to be late to the first period of the first day. But a late teacher means less work, so she's not really worried about that.

It's not the reminder on the board to turn in the summer assignment that she forgot to do, and it's not the fact that she has her uniform shirt tucked in like a nerd whereas everyone else hasn't even bothered to wear the uniform. It's not the million books she's carrying in the backpack on her shoulders. It's not the aching of her teeth from the newly applied braces.

No, Seles knows she is doomed from the start because of the girl standing in front of her. Rather, the girl bent over in front of her. Said girl has her back to Seles as she bends over to pick up a pencil that fell on the ground. Said girl is also wearing extremely tight skinny jeans. Said girl also has an amazing ass.

_Well damn._

Yep, she's fucking doomed. She had told herself over and over on the bus that she was not going to have a crush on anyone this year. Not one crush. She made this resolution mostly because the last time she had a crush on someone, that same raven-haired girl was crushing on her older brother. And then the time before that, well, that blonde chick was too much of a psycho religious weirdo to get involved with Seles. Her psycho religious weirdo father made sure of that.

The girl with the amazing ass stands up suddenly, shaking Seles out of her musings. Seles waits anxiously as the girl stands still for a moment, examining her nails, before she finally turns around to face Seles.

"Oh hi!" she exclaims. Her sea green eyes sparkle with mirth, and her shoulder length blonde hair sways gently with each movement. She sticks out a hand to Seles, who immediately grabs the girl's slender fingers in her own. "I'm Mithos!"

"Mithos?" Seles asks, still holding onto the girl's hand. "What kind of name is that?"

Smooth.

"It's Greek~," Mithos explains cheerfully, eyes still twinkling. "I was named after my grandfather."

"Grandfather-?"

Aw, shit. This is the second time she's fallen for a guy who happens to look like a girl. He's probably gay like the last one too. Maybe he'll make a good fashion consultant then.

"I'm Seles," she mumbles, finally letting go of Mithos' hand. "Nice to meet you."

"You must be new here too," Mithos chirps, following Seles as she moves to sit down at the back of the classroom. "My sister and I just moved here from another country."

"That's fascinating," Seles says dryly, finally picking a seat. She's going to sit in the very back in the corner. It's the perfect seat. The teacher will never see her doodling.

Mithos sits down in front of her, still rambling. God, if the whole student body is like him, she's going to have to shoot something, preferably someone.

"What period do you have lunch?" Mithos exclaims suddenly, ripping Seles' schedule out her hands. "Hey, we have lunch together!"

"Whoop de doo."

"We should sit together, since we're both new here."

"Yay."

The rest of the day comes and goes. Seles suffers through lunch with Mithos, who rambles incessantly the entire time. Strangely enough, he gets less annoying as the day goes on. She finds out in the last period of the day that they also have theatre together, and to her surprise, Mithos is shy as a turtle on stage. Are turtles shy wtfbbq?

Their theater teacher, the rather inexpressive Mr. Aurion, announces to them in a monotone that since they are in theater class, they will be required to participate in the school's spring production of _The Sound of Music_. Seles' brother is, unfortunately, an enormous fan of this particular musical, and she has heard enough bad shower-based renditions of "The Lonely Goatherd" for one lifetime. Probably enough for seven lifetimes.

There's a boy in their theatre class who introduces himself as Genis Sage (Mithos inserts the obvious penis joke here), and frantically tries to explain to Mr. Aurion that he's supposed to be in computer applications and not theater. Mr. Aurion does not give a shit and tells him as such.

Seles finds herself falling into an odd relationship with Mithos as the year goes on. He eventually gains her trust after revealing his huge love for Craig Ferguson, and they spend the autumn together in an unconventional manner: window shopping at the mall, passing notes in detention, smoking in the woods behind the school, accidentally making out once at a Halloween party that they are somehow invited to, and trying to conquer Mithos' stage fright (which is another way of saying, "Seles signing him up to sing 'Poker Face' at the talent show without telling him, and then forcing him to cross-dress for a week as compensation when he refuses to do it.").

Before they know it, winter break has arrived, and they somehow wind up at Regal Bryant's house for the biggest underage drinking fest anyone has ever seen. Give them a break, its New Years.

"Another year gone by," Mithos moans, throwing his empty beer can at the wall. "Another year wasted. I haven't done anything this year."

"I'm glad you appreciate my company," Seles snorts. She's wearing the blouse her brother gave her for Christmas. It's the most hideous thing she's ever laid eyes on, so bad that Mithos literally tried to look up the Fashion Police in the phone book to have Zelos arrested.

Mithos glances at her. "That shirt is the ugliest thing I have ever seen."

"I'm pretty sure that's the fifth time you've said that in the last minute and a half."

"I'm pretty sure I'm wasted so you're not allowed to make fun of the retarded things I say."

"What fun is it watching you get wasted then?"

Genis stumbles into the room just then, holding hands with a pink-haired girl Seles recognizes as Regal's girlfriend's sister, or something like that.

"What are you even doing here?" Mithos exclaims, gaping at Mithos. Genis flushes.

"I-I was invited," he stutters. "What are you two doing here?"

"We were invited too," Seles mumbles. She throws a dart in Genis' direction, but it somehow ends up hitting Mithos. God damn, they're so fucked up. "Mithos, we need to stop drinking."

"It's News Years, I'll drink all I want."

"You guys are drinking?" Genis shrieks. Seles notices his girlfriend hasn't changed her expression this entire time. Mithos shrugs.

"You aren't?" he asks. As Genis sputters, Mithos somehow manages to bring himself to his feet (he falls over a few times, but Seles is feeling generous, so she's not going to laugh at him) and make his way to the door.

"This party blows," he announces with a slur. "Let's go."

Seles rolls her eyes, but follows him nonetheless, turning around once to give Genis and his creepy girlfriend the best damn finger ever.

Mithos calls her the next day to complain about the lecture he got from his sister for drinking, and Seles is grateful for once that her brother is known for having monstrous New Years parties with even more monstrous amounts of alcohol. Zelos is passed out on the floor with his arm around a kid that Seles recognizes from school. She was introduced to him the day before as "My Bud," but she never got a chance to ask why Zelos was hitting on underage dorks. No, she has more important things to do.

More important things that happen to include getting her role in _The Sound of Music_. Neither she nor Mithos can sing worth a damn, yet somehow they end up cast as two of the children. Well. There aren't really that many other roles, to be honest.

"Why was I cast as the five year old?" Mithos moans, glancing over the cast list. Seles spots her own name, and- who the fuck is Louisa?

"Gretel's the five year old," Genis explains as he stands on his tiptoes and peers over their shoulders. "You're Marta. She's seven, I think."

"I'm still a chick!" Mithos wails.

"I'm never told you this before," Seles says with a smirk, "but when I first met you I thought you were a chick."

"You're not helping, you bitch."

Rehearsals go as expected. Seles purposely sings even more off-key than usual just to piss off the control freak that plays Maria. Mithos turns into a quivering ball of goo once he's on stage. It's unanimously decided that Marta's character should become not only deaf, but mute as well.

"You motherfucker," Seles growls, hitting him with her chemistry textbook (she's failing that class by the way). "You have the entire drama department wrapped around your finger because you're so damn cute."

"I am?" Mithos coos, batting his eyelashes at her. She hits him again.

"That golden hair, and those green eyes, and your slightly chubby cheeks and your heart-shaped chin-"

"Okay, stop, you're freaking me out."

Seles relents, but only after two weeks when she's finally finished ranting about how cute Mithos is.

Mr. Aurion calls her into his office one day after rehearsal, and she's praying so hard for him to kick her out of the musical that she barely catches what he actually says.

"Sorry what?" she exclaims. "I must have misheard you."

"I asked you," he explains with a slight growl, "to tell your brother to stop hitting on my son."

"Your son?" Who the fuck knew he had a son? Oh wait… "You mean Bud?"

"Who?"

"Never mind, I'll tell him."

She carries Mr. Aurion's warning to Zelos, who pretty much laughs in her face. The next day, she comes home and finds Zelos sprawled out on the couch with a cut lip, a broken nose and two black eyes. She never knew her theatre teacher was so tough.

The end of winter passes slowly. It snows constantly through February, then stops abruptly just before March- then picks up again halfway to April. Seles is tired of wearing leggings under her uniform, and Mithos is tired of keeping his fabulous spring clothing in the closet. He's keeping something else in the closet too, but Seles has been there, done that and knows he'll come round (or out) with time.

April finally arrives, and Seles tries to kill each of her teachers because they all failed to mention (she probably just wasn't listening, but it's still their fault) that standardized testing starts in April; so Seles finds herself sitting in a crowded classroom, staring at diagrams of atoms and struggling to decide which one is an electron. To make matters even worse, Mithos is in the same room as her (Wilder and Yggdrasill, there aren't too many Xs in between), and he has a fucking cold. Meaning, he coughs constantly. It's gets so fucking irritating that she throws her pencil at him when the test proctor isn't looking, and then realizes with great chagrin that she can't finish the test without a pencil. Well, she failed that.

"_Totally unprepared are you to face a world of men~! Timid and shy and scared are you of things beyond your kin~!" _

And finally, it arrives. _The Sound of Music _is performed three times in early May, and Seles is, unfortunately, in every one of these performances. To be honest, and she'll never admit this out loud, but she's grown quite fond of theater. Not necessarily the class, just theatre in general; she found out, to her surprise, that when she actually tries, she can sing quite decently. Mithos is still a hopeless case, but Marta is deaf and mute in this production ("the token disabled child," Mithos' brother-in-law sighs), so that hardly matters.

"Is my life ever going to be normal?" Seles asks, ripping her hair out of the braids they'd been put in. Mithos sits on the counter, swinging his legs and obnoxiously humming about his favorite things.

"Well I think that went well," Genis exclaims. He sidles up to the mirror where Seles is scratching stage makeup off of her face and plucks the straps of his lederhosen. "It could have been worse, certainly. Even though I was supposed to be in computer applications-"

"Genis, would you just shut the fuck up about that already?" Seles snaps. "The year is almost over. You're not getting transferred to computer apps."

Genis looks highly insulted for a moment, and opens his mouth to make a smart-ass retort in his nasally whine of a voice when Mithos cuts him off with a long, dramatic wail. He'd be a good actor if he weren't so stage shy.

"How did you get cast as a boy?" Mithos exclaims, pointing at Mithos' lederhosen. "I have to wear a dress and prance around and pretend I have a vagina!"

"There's nothing wrong with having a vagina!" Seles argues, glaring at him.

"I never said there was; except I have a penis, and I'd quite like to keep it that way."

"Where is this conversation going?" Genis mutters, clutching his hair.

That conversation ends right then and there, because Mithos promptly remembers that he has to take his AZT (Seles: When the fuck did you get AIDS? I kissed you at that Halloween party!) and that just makes everyone else feel really awkward.

Before she knows it, the school year is over. On the last day, she and Mithos leave school together, skipping home with their arms linked, singing "Do-Re-Mi" as loud as they can. Seles just wants to fall asleep and forget about how lousy she did on her chemistry final. Mithos has full intentions of getting high.

And it's that night, after Seles has kicked Mithos out of her house, sprayed Febreeze everywhere in an attempt to rid the living room of the distinct smell of marijuana (not that Zelos would even care, but she can barely breathe, it reeks) and gone up to her room and had a good cry when she realized that she didn't get the cute girl from history to sign her yearbook… it's then that Zelos comes home and informs her that he's gotten a job on the other side of the world.

They've moved around a lot ever since their father died, and she's used to this conversation. It's routine to her; they've never been in the same place for more than a year, and it's never bothered her before that they're moving. She's never really had any friends before now. Before Mithos.

She tells him that night when she climbs through his window and catches him dancing to "California Girls" (the Beach Boys version, thank God, though she would peg him as the kind to fall for Katy Perry) in his underwear. He doesn't even seem to care that he's standing there in just his boxers. He doesn't seem to care about much after Seles tells him that she's moving.

"We did some crazy shit this year," Mithos whispers later, as they lay on the roof his house and look at the stars. Seles laughs.

"Crazy doesn't even begin to describe it."

Mithos smiles and hums a little bit, but his face falls again after only a few seconds. "What am I going to do without you? The only other person who I am even vaguely acquainted with is Penis Genis."

"At least you know someone," Seles snorts. "I don't even speak their language."

"Well, that's not surprising. How many times have you tried to pass Spanish I?"

"Oh, fuck off."

The spend the rest of June likes this, talking in quiet voices on rooftops, endlessly teasing each other, playing pranks, trying to tone down their smoking and drinking habits. They're only fifteen after all. They've got their whole lives ahead, as Mr. Aurion is quick to remind them.

"I heard you're moving in July," he says when they run into him at the grocery store. They're only here because Seles is out of tampons, and needed some stat; but of course, Mithos decided that they also needed Pringles and Jelly Beans and he tries to buy vodka as a joke, but it turns out that the cashier doesn't give a shit and lets him get away with it.

"Oh, yeah," Seles says awkwardly. She hates seeing teachers outside of school, especially ones as weird as Mr. Aurion.

He shifts his feet, staring at her. She stares back at him.

"You were good in theater this year," he says, finally looking away from her. It seems he can't compliment her to her face. "I know you were taking the class because you needed the credit, but you should consider continuing with drama."

"Yeah," Seles says, wiping her bangs out of her face. Damn, it's hot in this store. "Yeah, I think I will."

Mr. Aurion seems shocked that for once she's not being a condescending bitch, but by the time he looks up again, Mithos has dragged her out of the store.

They move out of their house on the last day of June. As Zelos packs the car for the trip to the airport, Mithos cries in front of Seles for the first time.

"God, don't do that," she scolds, hitting him lightly on the arm. She can feel tears welling up in her own eyes, and she doesn't want to show any sort of weakness in front of him. He's going through a lot more than she is.

"I can't believe you're leaving me," he manages to say through snobs. She almost has to laugh at that one.

"It's not like I have a choice," she says softly. He wipes his cheeks, green eyes still shining.

"Ah, yeah," he mutters. "I know. I'll miss you."

"Stop being so cliché."

"…"

"I'll miss you too."

"You'll write to me, won't you?" Mithos exclaims, pulling her in for a big hug. It's awkward at first, but then her tears finally start flowing and she finds that she never wants to let go of him.

"Y-you idiot," she stutters, crying into his shoulder. "I'm not going to write you. Ever heard of email?"

"Nooo, that's not personal enough. Email me your address and then I'll send you stationary."

Seles lets out a laugh, and Mithos holds her out at arms length. He smiles at her, tears still brimming in his eyes.

"It's hard to lose a friend," he whispers. She clutches his hands.

"I wouldn't know."

They embrace again. Zelos calls for her to hurry up. She has every intention of ignoring him, but Mithos pulls away again and whispers a final goodbye. He kisses her on the cheek, and then he is gone.

It's the end of August, and Seles steps into another classroom in another school in another country. The scene is so familiar. Students who stare at the new foreign girl, a teacher who happens to be late, words written on the board in a language she can't understand.

The only thing missing is the new friend she's going to make.

She should have known. There will never be anyone like Mithos, and she's never going to be happy like that again. Sighing, she heads to the back of the classroom where she takes the seat in the last row in the corner. She closes her eyes and prays that this year won't be like every year before Mithos.

"Excuse me?"

Seles' eyes fly open.

A blonde girl stands in front of her, holding out a pencil. "You dropped this," she says in highly accented English. Seles feels herself smile for the first time in two months.

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><p>The title is (as most of you probably know) the same title of a song from <em>The Sound of Music<em>. There's also a quote from this song in italics in the story somewhere.

Let me know what you think. ;)


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